Empire Earth vs Rise to Ruins
Empire Earth
Empire Earth lets you take the reins of a newborn civilization and nurture it so it'd grow into a formidable empire that can eventually dominate the globe. But of course, your rise to power will not go unchallenged, so expect the need to flex your military muscles from time to time or employ some diplomatic action to ensure the expansion of your empire. As you go through various eras until the final, hypothetical "nano era", you'll need to invest in upgrading your technology both for your normal citizens and for your military just so your empire can keep up with the times and have both military might and economic strength growing in tandem. Multiplayer is also available but only through LAN.Empire Earth may not have been as popular as Age of Empires, but it is still a pretty renowned real-time strategy game back in the day. If you love the genre, you'll definitely enjoy playing this game.
Rise to Ruins
Rise to Ruins is a godlike empire-building strategy game that incorporates some elements of tower defense (during night time). Inspired by games like Towns, Gnomoria, Banished and Dwarf Fortress, you will need to build a thriving empire, recruit new nomads to join you, manage your empire's resources, and ensure that your people are content in this game. During the night, however, enemies will start hammering at your gates, and as such, set up proper tower-defense-like defenses to funnel your enemies into easily manageable "slaughter zones" as well as appoint guards to patrol your empire's parameters.There are also tons of fun little features that made this game so engaging to play, including your special godlike powers which you can use to help your little people survive or to cause them a huge amount of distress, and how the creatures and people in the game react to the presence of godly powers. You can even completely change the landscape of a map if you wish. The game has a ton of maps and game modes, even in its early access form, for you to play around with as well!
Rise to Ruins is still a work in progress but the game seems almost completely done and ready for launch. So, although it's still technically in early access, you can rest assured that the game is in its playable stage of development - you can immediately dive right in after purchasing the game!
P/S: There's also a trick that you can use to stop enemies from proliferating at all on the map you play on if you fancy a peaceful sort of game.